Don’t use rally to oust Arroyo, use system to jail guilty’
Friday, February 29th, 2008
People
should not use the interfaith rally in Makati City Friday to press for
the ouster of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Senator Richard Gordon
urged Friday.
In a phone interview with INQUIRER.net, Gordon
warned that a rally that seeks to oust Arroyo could tempt the military
into mounting a coup that would benefit the very person the protesters
seek to remove from power.
"I’ve always been a risk taker but we
have to be careful because it could be a ‘coup me,’" he said, referring
to a scheme by which a coup would actually benefit the administration.
Gordon
said he wants the country’s political and judicial system to work and
urged the protesters to exploit the system to jail the corrupt.
"We
are all looking for justice. To my mind, [going to the rally] is an
exercise in futility if we don’t put anyone who’s guilty in jail. I
don’t care who he is or who she is, but we must let the institutions
work. Let the courts, the prosecution, the Sandigayan [anti-graft
court] function," he said.
"Are we so stupid that we cannot make
this system work? After Erap [former president Joseph Estrada] was
charged, convicted, jailed, and pardoned, have we become better morally
as a people?" he asked.
Gordon said the current political crisis
is the result of issues not being resolved. "There’s no closure. Did
EDSA 1 resolve anything? [Former President Corazon] Cory [Aquino] was
not able to solve the murder of her husband. Did EDSA 2 resolve
anything? Sure, Erap was convicted, but he was also pardoned," he said.
He
cited the case of China as a nation that values closure. There, he
said, all government officials get their day in court. He noted that
some Chinese ministers have lost their lives following state trials for
failing to perform their public duties.
While he said he would
not stop his son, Red Cross volunteers, and friends from joining the
Makati rally, Gordon himself is not going.
"A senator like
myself who will stand as judge in case an impeachment case is brought
against her should be circumspect and independent. We cannot be seen as
biased…There’s a lot of anger out there and [going there] can cloud
your judgment," he said.
Gordon, an alumnus of Ateneo De Manila
University, said he is not even going to watch the La Salle-Ateneo
fund-raising basketball game "for truth and Jun [Rodolfo Noel Lozada,
key witness in the Senate probe into the national broadband network
scandal]" on Sunday.
SEN RICHARD GORDON
‘Don’t use rally to oust Arroyo, use system to jail guilty’
